Amazon Revenue Surges 38% As Q4 Numbers Blow Past Estimates

The Amazon freight train kept chugging in the fourth quarter, recording a 38% rise in revenue to $60.45 billion and earnings per share of $3.75, more than double the year-ago quarter’s profit level.

Wall Street had expected revenue of $59.9 billion and per-share earnings of $1.88.

The company said it booked a gain of $789 million in the quarter due to the new tax law, which took effect in late December. It offered optimistic guidance for the forthcoming first-quarter results, forecasting a sales gain of between 34% and 42%.

Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and CEO, gave a name to his company’s performance: Alexa. “Our 2017 projections for Alexa were very optimistic, and we far exceeded them. We don’t see positive surprises of this magnitude very often — expect us to double down,” Bezos said. “We’ve reached an important point where other companies and developers are accelerating adoption of Alexa. There are now over 30,000 skills from outside developers, customers can control more than 4,000 smart home devices from 1,200 unique brands with Alexa, and we’re seeing strong response to our new far-field voice kit for manufacturers.

Among the tidbits included in the earnings release was a stat on streaming of NFL Thursday Night Football games. The company said 18.4 million viewers from more than 200 countries and territories streamed games across devices.

Executives will be discussing the results with Wall Street analysts during a conference call beginning at 2:30PM PT. Check back for updates.